The use of various wireless devices has proliferated in recent years. In particular, many forms of wireless devices used for monitoring (e.g., monitoring environments, movement, conditions, etc.), data collection (e.g., collecting data regarding monitored events and conditions, obtaining data from other devices, etc.), and/or data reporting (e.g., providing collected data to a host system or server, displaying data to a user, etc.) have been deployed in recent years. A particular example of a form of wireless device seeing increased deployment in recent years is the wireless wearable device.
Wireless wearable devices may, for example, be provided in the form of a battery powered personal fitness monitor (e.g., a FITBIT device available from Fitbit, Inc.) or a smartwatch device (e.g., an IWATCH available from Apple Inc.) worn on the wrist of a user and used for health monitoring and physical activity data collection (e.g., monitor steps, heart rate, electrocardiogram, sleep quality, etc.). Processing of the collected data for meaningful, long term, and even shared use typically requires the use of a host personal computing system, data collection and processing server system, etc. Accordingly, wireless wearable devices are often adapted for synchronization of sensor data with a particular system.
In order to provide the requisite wireless communication for data synchronization without unacceptably impacting the battery life of the wireless wearable device, such wireless wearable devices may implement relatively low energy wireless communication techniques. One popular form of relatively low energy wireless communication is Bluetooth-low-energy (BLE) communications. BLE is a wireless personal area network (PAN) technology designed to provide wireless data communication with considerably reduced power consumption and cost while maintaining a similar communication range to that of more traditional PAN wireless communications.
Characteristics of the usage patterns of wireless wearable devices implementing low energy wireless communication techniques, such as BLE, for providing data synchronization include manual intervention and one-to-one connection. For example, the wireless wearable devices generally must be manually paired with a corresponding host (e.g., a user's wireless wearable device in the form of a smartwatch device or personal fitness monitor must be manually paired with the user's host processing device (e.g., smartphone, tablet device, personal computing system, etc.) to establish a PAN for communication of data to/from the wireless wearable device). Moreover, manual intervention by the user is generally initiated in order to synchronize physical activity data with the host processing device. The aforementioned pairing typically provides for a one-to-one connection in which the wireless wearable device may only communicate with one host processing device for data communication and host processing device may only communicate with one wireless wearable device for data communication at any particular time.
There may, however, be situations in which sensor data from a plurality of wireless wearable devices is to be collected. For example, a school may wish to conduct a survey on physical activity of their students, wherein a wireless wearable device of each student may be used for monitoring physical activity. Likewise, a nursing home or hospital facility may wish to monitor the physiological condition and/or physical location of a population of patients, wherein a wireless wearable device of each such patient may be used for their monitoring. Implementing sensor data collection with respect to a plurality of wireless wearable devices presents a number of challenges when attempting to utilize existing low energy wireless communication techniques. For example, where the facility provides wireless wearable devices to the individuals to be monitored, compatibility issues between a participant user's host processing device and the provided wireless wearable device may be present due to heterogeneous host processing platforms and operating system (OS) versions (e.g., BLE not supported, application not supported for an old OS version, etc.), thereby preventing wireless data collection using typical pairing techniques. Providing host processing platforms (e.g., smartphones or tablet devices) to the individuals to be monitored, and thus avoid issues such as the above mentioned compatibility issues, is generally cost prohibitive. Moreover, providing and maintaining software applications (e.g., mobile app) for execution by the participant users' host processing platforms for facilitating collection of the data of a plurality of wireless wearable devices by a data collection and processing server system associated with the facility presents challenges, such as and inconvenience and extra workload for the population being monitored and/or the facility staff.
One attempted solution for sensor data collection with respect to a plurality of devices has been to upload data from a plurality of wireless wearable devices to a data collection and processing server system via one or more gateways, as shown in plural sensor data collection system 100 of FIG. 1. In the example of FIG. 1, data synchronization for a plurality of devices (shown as wireless wearable devices 110A-110H) is provided with respect to a host data collection and processing server system (shown as cloud-based server 130) via gateway 120.
In the illustrated example, gateway 120 provides a network node for interfacing between the wireless wearable devices using BLE communications and the host processing device using Internet protocol (IP) communications. In operation according to existing practice, gateway 120 is installed in a fixed location, wherein the wireless wearable devices may enter and exit the signal coverage area or service area of the gateway. Data of a particular wireless wearable device may be synchronized via data communication with the gateway during such time as the wireless wearable device is adequately served by the gateway. Simple ad hoc synchronization strategies, such as “first come first served” and “strongest RSSI first,” are typically used in selecting a particular wireless wearable device for data synchronization between different wireless wearable devices located within the signal coverage area of the gateway.
Although such a gateway may be used to address compatibility issues and may be configured to automatically synchronize physical activity data without manual intervention by the respective users, the use of existing gateway configurations is not without disadvantage. Such a gateway introduces a communications bottleneck in scenarios for sensor data collection for a plurality of devices. The individual wireless wearable devices typically stay within the signal coverage area of the gateway for a limited time slot. BLE provides very limited bandwidth, and the gateway performance determines whether all required sensor data can be collected timely and efficiently during instances when the individual wireless wearable devices are within signal coverage area of the gateway. Wireless wearable devices enter or leave the coverage of gateway at any time, and disconnection frequently occurs during synchronization. Moreover, repeated reconnection of the wireless wearable devices with the gateway drains battery life of the wireless wearable devices. Irrespective of whether data synchronization is accomplished, the wireless wearable devices generate new sensor data continuously, which ideally is to be timely communicated to the host processing system. Simple ad hoc synchronization strategies cannot easily optimize the data synchronization performance provided by operation of the gateway. For example, effective prioritization is not provided to facilitate synchronization of data that may become stale while one or more wireless wearable devices dominate the data communications. All the foregoing factors affect the data synchronization performance of the sensor data collection system.
The existing data synchronization techniques that utilize gateway implementations have not adequately addressed the above deficiencies. As one specific example, sensor data collection via a gateway as described in patent application publication number US 2017/0164224 A1, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, focuses on how to manage the sensor devices, and does not provide optimization on the synchronization performance. As another specific example, sensor data collection via a base station as described in patent application publication number CN 107071697 A, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, provides for data synchronization based on receive signal strength indicator (RSSI) and channel quality, and also does not provide optimization on the synchronization performance. Moreover, neither US 2017/0164224 A1 nor CN 107071697 A provide any means to address operation with respect to unstable wireless wearable devices (e.g., devices moving in and out of the signal coverage area of a gateway) or to effectively prioritize data communication for efficiently and timely synchronizing the wireless wearable communication devices.